Firefighters of Belfast

By Brian Allaway

The firefighters responded to every incident during the Troubles, wherever it was located, seeing the best and worst of humanity.The years 1969 to 1994 were particularly difficult for Northern Ireland, and what would become known as 'the Troubles' would test the firefighters of Belfast to their limits. This book provides a record of that time from a firefighter's perspective, combining thorough research and contemporary records with first hand accounts from people who were involved, bringing these significant events to life through the words of the people who lived through them.Full of character and characters, this personal account places on record the dedicated service and invaluable contribution made by firefighters to the people of Belfast when the city needed them most. Firefighters of Belfast is ultimately an uplifting portrait of human courage and resilience during the most difficult of times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luath Press
• Release date: Dec 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912387205

Brian Allaway

Brian Allaway is a retired firefighter. In 1969, at the age of 16, Brian joined the Belfast Fire Brigade and served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. In 1994, he transferred to Lothian and Borders Fire Brigade in Edinburgh and was promoted to Firemaster in 2002, the last to hold that title. He has a BA from the Open University, an MSSc from the Queen’s University of Belfast and a PhD from The University of Edinburgh. His first book, Culture, Identity and Change in the Fire and Rescue Service, was published in 2011 by the Institute of Fire Engineers. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers and recipient of the Queen’s Fire Service Medal, Brian lives in Edinburgh.

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Introduction

EVEN THOUGH BELFAST WAS not always a sectarian city, the roots of sectarian violence can be traced back to the early 19th century when the city was industrialising and growing rapidly. One early example of sectarian violence occurred on the evening of 12 July 1813 when some local people attacked an Orange procession attempting to march down Royal Avenue. Some of the Orangemen involved went to get muskets and shot dead two bystanders, who happened to be Protestants. Four Orangemen were convicted of murder and four Catholics were found guilty of riot. However, the wider implication was that the bitter ethnic rivalries, which at the time existed in parts of rural Ulster, were brought into town.¹ Street rioting, following Orange Order marches, continued through the 1800s and Catholics and Protestants started to segregate into separate areas. Driven by rumour, counter-rumour and violence on both sides, waves of savage disturbances occurred periodically throughout the rest of the 1800s and well into the 1900s, with an upsurge in violence in 1921, due to the division of Ireland into two jurisdictions. There are relatively few records of Fire Brigade involvement in dealing with disturbances during this time but it is known that, following the violence, which occurred in 1864, the Belfast Fire Brigade were paid £12 for extinguishing fires that were started by rioters.²

During the Second World War, Belfast was a target for German bombing and the city suffered badly during the Blitz.³ The tragedy was that most of the bombs fell not on strategic targets, but on the densely populated residential streets from which very few people had been evacuated. In all, nearly half the housing stock in the city was affected, and thousands were left homeless. However, the fire service gained valuable experience, which would serve it well in the years to come.

While there was some sectarian violence between 1935 and 1962, 1963 saw a rise in street violence in Belfast in what came to be called ‘the Battle of Divis Street’, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary removed the Irish Tricolour from the headquarters of the Republican Party. In 1966, the Ulster Volunteer Force was formed on the Shankill Road, taking its name from a pre-1914 unionist private army raised against home rule, and, between 1967 and 1969, politics returned to the streets during the rise of the civil rights movement and loyalist reaction to it.⁴

Despite, or maybe because of, their shared Troubles, the people of Belfast are great, resilient and friendly. They can also be ‘candid, very frank and not afraid to give you advice or encouragement, positive or negative’.⁵ The Brigade’s firefighters are an integral part of the city and share many of the characteristics of its people. All of their resourcefulness, experience and competence were required as the Troubles developed in 1969 and continued for the 25 years or more that followed. They were required to face vicious rioting, bombing, burning and killing, dealing with Troubles-related incidents on an almost daily basis; and often several times a day, unarmed and with very basic protective clothing. Throughout this time, they delivered a fully competent emergency service to all sections of Northern Ireland society, without fear or favour and at great personal risk. They lived and worked in Belfast, many of them in areas that saw the Troubles first hand, but they left their personal beliefs and loyalties behind when they came into the fire station and looked after each other and the people of their city. The firefighters responded to every incident during the Troubles, wherever it was located, seeing the best and worst of humanity, and in this way they provided an almost unique example of courage and compassion in very difficult circumstances.

Even though there is not enough room to describe every incident, or tell the story of every firefighter, I hope that the examples included here will give a strong flavour of ‘how it was’ for those who were there at the time. Extraordinary things were achieved by ordinary firefighters and I hope this book does them justice.

¹Hepburn (1996).

²Boyd (1969).

³Maguire (2009).

⁴Boyd (1969).

⁵Chris Kerr.

PART ONE

1969 to 1971

The Descent into Chaos

1969

NINETEEN-SIXTY-NINE is the year generally regarded as the beginning of what has come to be known as the Troubles, witnessing as it did the first deaths since 1966 and the arrival of the army on the streets.⁶ The first quarter of the year reflected Northern Ireland’s occasionally violent and sectarian history, with hints of the death and destruction yet to come. 1 January 1969 saw the start of a three-day march, organised by the Peoples Democracy, from Belfast to Londonderry in support of civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland. Although the march began peacefully, counter demonstrations were organised in Protestant areas and, despite a police presence, fights soon broke out when stones were thrown at the marchers. Similar scenes were seen in Newry where another civil rights march ended in violence. However, for the firefighters of Belfast, things carried on more or less as normal for a city-based emergency service.

The Belfast Fire Brigade at the Beginning of 1969

At the start of 1969 the Brigade had a total establishment of approximately 300 personnel, with firefighters based in five stations: Central (which was also the Brigade Headquarters), Ardoyne, Whitla Street, Knock and Cadogan. They operated a ‘three, three and three shift’ system with three day shifts of nine hours on duty, followed by three night shifts of 15 hours, followed by three days off. Therefore, there would be approximately 65 firefighters, with ten pumping appliances, three height appliances, a foam tender and an emergency tender, on duty at any given time. The firefighters’ personal protective equipment was pretty basic at that time. It comprised of: a cork helmet to protect the head; a woollen fire tunic with a leather belt, to which was attached a belt line (a short, narrow diameter rope used for various purposes) and a firefighter’s axe; a pair of black rubberised leggings, one for each leg, they came up in a point at the front where they were attached to the belt of the trousers by a button and dog clip (their shape meant that your backside was always getting wet); and rubber boots with steel toe caps and soles.

The Brigade had a fully developed organisational culture, similar to that of many other Brigades in Great Britain. It was traditional, hierarchical and autocratic in its nature, with a militaristic management style that could be seen as petty at times:⁷

Your axe had to be polished and your belt had to be polished, your leggings had to be polished. It was really very regimental in those days.⁸

You were terrified of the Station Officer and there were certain things that had to be done, like floors washed and stairs washed. The brasses out the front had to be done as well; if you hadn’t cleaned them properly you had to stay after nine to make sure they were cleaned properly. They had all sorts of devious things. They used to put chalk marks under the mudguards to see if the fire engine had been cleaned during the day.⁹

The Brigade was an integral part of the local community and provided a well-regarded service to it:

It was fantastic, you had to do everything. You had to clean out sewers in the Markets. You were the doctor’s surgery for the Markets. ‘You may come round me Da’s beating me Mother’, and the Land Rover had to go round and sort things out. It was just the place they would come if they were in trouble at all.¹⁰

Whitla was like a first aid post on a Saturday night for all the drunks coming out from the dock area, they didn’t go to the doctor they went to Whitla Fire Station. These two guys arrived at the door and this wee man was bent double. ‘My mate’s broke his back!’ The two of them were drunk as skunks. So they sort of shuffled him in: ‘what’s wrong?’ ‘I can’t straighten up! I can’t straighten up!’ So we took off his coat and everybody was falling about laughing. He had braces on and he had buttoned the braces to his spur, to the buttons on his trousers. They were holding him down.¹¹

Even though the workload was similar to other large cities, the Brigade in 1969 was relatively quiet in comparison to what was to come:

It was quiet in the sense that it was house fires, normal type fires, but you were busy enough.¹²

This relatively peaceful existence started to change in April, when a series of explosions hit the water supplies of the city, causing days of water shortages. On 4 April, the Dunadry water installation was hit, on 20 April the Silent Valley water pipeline, on 24 April the water pipeline from Lough Neagh and on 25 April there was an explosion in Annalong.

The burning had started. On 7 April four fire engines dealt with a fire started by a petrol bomb in Queen’s University. The fire wasn’t particularly big or difficult to deal with and it was under control within 15 minutes. A more serious fire was started on 9 April in Donaghy and Kelly’s, a three-storey upholstery warehouse in Corporation Street. This fire was much more difficult to extinguish and it took 35 firefighters three hours to bring under control. During the night of 20 April, at about 11.00pm, ten post offices and a bus depot on the Falls Road were petrol bombed in a seemingly co-ordinated attack. Two of the post offices were completely burnt out, one was badly damaged, and the rest, together with the bus depot, were only slightly damaged.

On 28 May there was a major fire in the Grand Central Hotel. Guests climbed onto window ledges to escape from the blaze and a turntable ladder was used to carry out rescues from the upper floors. Eighteen guests were taken to hospital for medical attention. On 5 June fire destroyed the Wimpey Bar in Wellington Place. During the course of the incident two firefighters were blown out of the front of the building when the fire flashed over and burst the plate glass window at the front of the restaurant; a third firefighter was taken to hospital with cuts to his hands.

The City Erupts

In the middle of July 1969, street rioting returned to parts of the city.¹³ Stones and petrol bombs were thrown, with at least one car and several buildings damaged. The violence worsened at the beginning of August and the Brigade was often caught in the middle of riots after being called into action. On one Sunday alone, 19 fire calls were received from the Shankill/Crumlin Road area. A number of public houses and off-licences were set on fire and petrol bombs were thrown into the Holy Cross School. Cars and vans were destroyed by fire and one firefighter was injured. Things became even more dangerous when hostile crowds set a number of houses on fire and, in Hooker Street, firefighters were petrol-bombed by rioters when they were called to the scene:

I think once the Troubles started it just hit us with a bang, because they were burning everything. We were leaving the station at maybe half six at night and never got back till after nine in the morning; you were just going from one call to the other. They just burnt everything in sight, they really did.¹⁴

Dickie Sefton and Billy White

After a few days of relative calm, the violence and destruction started again on the night of 13 August. The trouble started in the west of the city when a crowd of about 200 people attacked Springfield Road Police Station, which was in the process of being rebuilt at the time. Arming themselves with sticks, stones and bricks from the building site the crowd marched down the Falls Road, breaking shop windows as they went. The police dispersed them into side streets, but they soon reformed at Divis Street where they attacked the Hastings Street Police Station with petrol bombs. During this attack a young girl was enveloped in flames when her clothing caught fire. Burning barricades were formed and burning tyres were used to set fire to two factories in Northumberland Street. Petrol bombs were thrown into a car showroom and a number of cars were taken and used to form a burning barricade, which blocked the Falls Road.

In response to this event, pairs of Brigade officers were given the job of assessing the various situations happening across the city in order to prioritise the workload of the Brigade and help in mobilisation decisions. As the Falls Road team made their way down the Falls Road, two petrol bombs were thrown into their car, the interior of which was immediately engulfed in fire, and the two men were immersed in the flames. Assistant Divisional Officer Richard (Dickie) Sefton lost control of the car and it careered from one side of the road to the other and hit a pedestrian, eventually coming to a stop, still on fire, at the side of the road against the gable end of a house in Peel Street.

Richard Sefton, on recalling the incident, said:

That was really the first big night of the rioting and the Assistant Chief Officer, Billy White, and I went out to survey the situation. We drove down the Falls Road, the rioting crowd surrounded us, then smashed our windscreen and chucked in two petrol bombs. Consequently the car went out of control and I remember knocking down somebody but I couldn’t see, and then I lost control completely and mounted the footpath, eventually crashed into the gable of Peel Street where the doors, lucky enough, burst open. Now if we had been wearing seat belts we would have been burnt to death. Billy White got out, and I rolled out and tried to roll (the fire on) myself out. At this time I couldn’t get oxygen because the flames were starting to suffocate me. I gathered later that some old lady from Peel Street ran over and beat me out with her bare hands, and then ran off. While I was lying there I heard this voice saying, ‘That’s not a policeman that’s a fireman’ and another voice said, ‘Let the bastard burn’. After that the ambulance duly arrived and I was taken to hospital, and then, for three days, I didn’t know whether I was blind because my eyes were fused shut, and then my hands were stuck together. So after that it took a period of two years with all the operations, 15 operations.¹⁵

At the time, this incident was seen as one of the worst cases to come out of the rioting in the city and the injuries to both men were horrific. They had suffered permanent and severe scarring to their faces, ears and particularly their necks and hands, every exposed part of their bodies had been badly burnt. Both men endured their terrific pain with fortitude and courage. Dickie had suffered horrendous damage to his appearance, but the worst damage was to his hands, both of which were permanently disfigured. Even though the effects of the burning were permanent, both men returned to duty in the fire service. During this incident, though they had been advised by the police to stay out of the area, the Brigade continued to provide a service to all the residents of the city. A local Member of Parliament, Paddy Devlin, paid tribute to the Brigade saying that, ‘firemen showed real courage in front of a violent mob’.¹⁶

**

On 14 August troops arrived on the streets of Belfast. I lived just off the Upper Crumlin Road at that time and, together with two of my friends, decided to take a walk down the Crumlin Road to see what was going on. Soldiers were lined up in the middle of the road, more or less on the white line, about a metre apart and facing in alternate directions. As we walked past an army Ferret armoured car, which was also in the middle of the road, its turret-mounted gun followed us down the street. It was a strange, somewhat surreal experience, but there was nobody apart from the soldiers about and somehow the area seemed quite calm.

Unfortunately the arrival of the army on the streets did not stop what was by then being called ‘The Troubles’, and that night was a night of riots and arson, with over 30 major fires and hundreds of petrol bombs being thrown by rival mobs.

There was more trouble on the 15 August when barricades of lorries and buses were erected and set on fire. By dawn of 16 August, firefighters had dealt with hundreds of fires and the smoke had gathered over the city in one massive pall. There was a palpable smell of smoke and burnt timber in the air and several large fires were still burning. A Fire Brigade spokesman said of the night that ‘more than 100 houses had been on fire and, in Bombay Street alone, 33 house were blazing. The fireman have been working nonstop throughout the night’.¹⁷

In Bombay Street, there were ‘only two jets in use, one at the end of each street. [By the time the firefighters] reached the middle of the street, the houses were falling down’.¹⁸

Having finished school that June, I was looking for a job. I watched the smoke, which engulfed the city from a vantage point on the Crumlin Road, and in response to an advert in the Belfast Telegraph that read:

Left school this year? Don’t settle for an ordinary job, choose a career with an exciting future! Be a JUNIOR FIREMAN in the Belfast Fire Brigade. Age limit – Over 16, under 17 on 1 August 1969. Pay – £340 p.a. at 17, £765 p.a. at 18. Free Uniform – Promotion Prospects – Day Release. Four weeks holiday. Closing Date – Monday, 25 August, 1969.

I decided to apply for a job with the Belfast Fire Brigade, a decision which would shape the rest of my life and one that I would never regret. Station Officer Paddy Heggarty was in charge of the training centre when I joined the Brigade; he was a jovial character and his son Joe would later be on the same watch as me in Chichester Street. Paddy was an amusing guy who used stories to illustrate his message when training recruits. He used one, told in a humorous manner but nonetheless giving a message, to let us junior firefighters know where we fitted in the hierarchy of the organisation:

Let me tell you where you fit into the Brigade. If I come in in a bad mood one morning I’ll shout at the Sub Officer, he’ll shout at the Leading Fireman who’ll shout at a fireman. The fireman will kick the station dog, which will bite the station cat and the station cat will scratch you, and that’s where you fit in.

But it was Leading Firefighter Ronnie (Dinger) Bell who with humour, patience and discipline, when necessary, seemed to know how to keep a bunch of 16-year-olds interested in, and committed to, the Fire Brigade. And it would be Ronnie who, for the next two years, would be responsible for turning us raw recruits into firefighters.

At the same time others were making similar decisions to mine, some of them in much more difficult circumstances:

In August 1969, our house was burnt down, the Fire Brigade were involved but had to evacuate. A street called Bombay Street basically disappeared. There was large scale rioting, the firefighters were coming under immense pressure, they were evacuated in the back of an ambulance out of the area and they had to leave their appliance. Stoned, petrol bombed, the whole heap, there was actually gunfire at times. Anybody who was in uniform, anyone who looked as though they came from authority, were targets. My father, who had been a firefighter, my two brothers, a couple of other people and I used the fire engine that was left to try and put out the flames. Got a lot of publicity, so when I tried to join the Fire Brigade, which I had done prior to this, I certainly found it slightly easier to get in on that second attempt than the first attempt.¹⁹

Although the death, damage and destruction didn’t rise to the levels seen in August of the year, the last four months of 1969 continued in more or less the same vein. One incident of particular note seemed to bode ill for the city when, on 21 September at about 6.30pm, a bomb, made from gelignite with a slow burning fuse and wrapped in brown paper, exploded in the docks area. On 5 November there was an explosion at the Ormeau Road gas works near the city centre when a small charge of gelignite started a fire in a gasholder. Despite the obvious danger, 30 firefighters fought the blaze using jets of water; they managed to extinguish it in about 30 minutes. It was a ‘dangerous’ incident, brought under control by setting up a ‘water curtain between the blazing gasholder and another curtain about 120 ft. away to stop the fire spreading’.²⁰ This all happened alongside the ‘normal’ incidents of fire that were happening continuously across the city.

Peace line

The rioting in Belfast and the burning of hundreds of houses in the city left thousands of people, mainly but not exclusively Catholics, homeless. By 18 August, 400 refugees were accommodated in army camps south of the border. By the end of the month 1800 families had moved homes as a result of the disturbances.²¹ In an attempt to provide at least some protection, barricades were erected by local people on both sides of Cupar Street, between the Falls and Shankill Roads, as communities continued to segregate. Consequently, when the army completed a ‘peace line’ on 10 September²² by erecting iron sheets as a barrier, it was a physical recognition of a division that already existed. Over the following years peace line between Protestant and Catholic areas were expanded and their construction became more sophisticated and permanent. By 2007 there were approximately 40 peace walls in Belfast, stretching nearly 13 miles in total.²³

In an early recognition of the realities of the situation, and in an attempt to help its members gain access to the areas worst affected by the unrest, the Brigade delivered hundreds of leaflets to the effected areas at the beginning of September 1969:

Your barricades have been erected to protect you: help us to ensure that they do not kill you.

Fire is still the greatest enemy of life and property and while your barricades may allay your fears, they will hinder the Fire Brigade from giving you assistance. Do not forget the lessons of the past; these show that during the year there are likely to be 500 houses burned, 1,000 chimney fires, 50 persons severely burned and five deaths from fires. Belfast Fire Brigade has been helping you since 1845. It exists to save life and to protect property. It turns out 12-15 seconds after a call is received. This can be wasted if we cannot get through to help. Two minutes may make a small fire a big fire and may be the difference between life and death. Help us to help you. Please make your barricades such that you can move them quickly when the emergency arises – it may be your child, or your wife, or your home that is in danger.

1970

FOR THE FIRE Brigade in Belfast in 1970 the normal work continued, much as it had in 1969. There were the usual fires in the home and loss of life to contend with, for example, at about 10.00am on the morning of 9 February, a team of workers were laying water pipes in a ten-foot deep trench at Stranmillis College, when suddenly the trench collapsed. The two men who were working in the trench at the time tried to escape by running out of the danger area. Unfortunately they were unsuccessful and were both trapped under tons of earth, at opposite ends of the trench. Their workmates tried frantically to rescue them. Firefighters arrived within minutes and joined the rescue efforts but to no avail. Workmen stood around in shock while firefighters removed pieces of wooden shoring and tons of clay to get to the trapped men. Both men were given first aid at the scene but they were pronounced ‘dead on arrival’ at hospital. On 18 March firefighters carried out an animal rescue when a donkey was rescued from deep mud at the side of the Holywood Road. The next evening there was a fire in three bitumen storage tanks at the Belfast Gasworks. This fire started as workers were breaking up the 500 gallon tanks and a spark caused the bitumen sludge in the bottom of one of the tanks to ignite. This kind of fire is particularly difficult, and often dangerous, to deal with and the specialist foam tender was used to extinguish it with a covering of foam.

There were also a number of more unusual incidents to be dealt with and, in February, a soldier received slight burns to his face when an oil stove was accidentally overturned setting fire to his observation post. Several rounds of ammunition detonated but thankfully no one was injured. In May, during a particularly violent storm, a fire that was started by lightning damaged two semi-detached houses.

Despite the obvious challenges these incidents brought to firefighters, they were overshadowed by the necessity of delivering a service in what was rapidly becoming a war zone. Although the future could not be predicted at the time, 1970 foreshadowed all of the additional difficulties and challenges that firefighters would have to face over the following decades of the Troubles. Rioting, shooting, burning caused by rioters, petrol bombs, firebombs, incendiary devices, and bombings. All of these factors would increase and worsen in the years to come.

The Rioting and Shooting Intensify

When the army arrived in Belfast during August 1969, Catholics had generally welcomed them as a protection against loyalist attacks. However, this situation changed over the following months, and, in April 1970, Ballymurphy saw the first major clashes between nationalists and the army.²⁴ The violence continued, and, over the second weekend in May, the rioting moved to the New Lodge Road with five hours of bitter street-fighting on the Saturday night. As the army kept rival mobs apart, fires were started in several areas of the city with petrol bombs, keeping the Brigade very busy. The trouble continued until daybreak.

On the Sunday night of